Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder didn’t mince his words about the incumbent US Ambassador to his country Richard Grenell, saying the US envoy’s treatment of the host country was insulting. Speaking with Reuters about Grenell, the veteran German politician said the ambassador’s actions suggested that he believed Germany to be occupied by America.

The Washington Post`s Josh Rogin has revealed stunning comments issued by Vice President Mike Pence during a conversation between the two aboard Air Force Two as the VP traveled for an official trip to Asia this week, where he landed in Singapore for regional summits highlighting Indo-Pacific security, trade and investment. Pence reportedly said the White House is prepared to undertake take dramatic policy changes regarding China if Beijing does not capitulate to its demands as the trade war continues.

After a certain length of time examining history in-depth, anyone who is honest and relatively objective comes to understand that most of what we are told about our past in the mainstream is completely fabricated. We learn that much of “history” is not about posterity or heritage and more about a continuous set of false narratives peppered with half-truths. That is to say, what we thought we knew is actually lies.

Beijing’s intellectual property-rights (IPR) practices, including patent infringement and the theft of proprietary technology and software, have been targeted by US President Donald Trump, who is using that issue to drive his trade war against China. And not just China. The United States is involved in efforts to force the world to respect IPR. But justice begins at home.

China’s “Belt and Road Initiative” is famous as an extension of their domestic infrastructure investments, but Russia is also investing heavily in infrastructure. Both countries need to do it in order to improve the future for their respective populations, and both Governments have avoided the Western development model of going heavily into debt in order to pay for creating and maintaining infrastructure. Both are, in fact, exceptionally low-debt Governments.

Economic collapse is not an event — it is a process. I’ve been saying this since the initial 2008 crash, and I suppose I will keep saying it until it burns into people’s minds because I don’t think that it is a widely understood concept. When alternative analysts talk about financial collapse, we are not talking about something that suddenly happens out of the blue, we are talking about an ongoing decline that occurs in stages. This decline is happening today in the U.S. and around the world, and it has been accelerating since the chaos of 2008. When we bring up the reality of collapse, we are referring to something that is happening NOW, not something waiting on the distant horizon.

It may well be that the unilateral wrecking ball politics of the Trump Administration are bringing about a result just opposite from that intended. Washington’s decision to abandon the Iran nuclear agreement and impose severe sanctions on companies trading Iran oil as of 4 November, is creating new channels of cooperation between the EU, Russia, China and Iran and potentially others. The recent declaration by Brussels officials of creation of an unspecified Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) to legally avoid US dollar oil trade and thereby US sanctions, might potentially spell the beginning of the end of the Dollar System domination of the world economy.

The United States says countries that have received waivers to continue purchases of oil from Iran will have to set up escrow accounts from which payments to Tehran would be settled. Senior US official Brian Hook was quoted by media as saying that settlements with Iran would be carried out through “credits” and not hard currency. Hook added that the importing nations would be required to make sure that Iran would spend the money from oil sales on humanitarian purchases.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin threatened the global financial messaging service SWIFT on Friday that it could be penalized if it doesn’t cut off financial services to entities and individuals doing business with Iran.

During the ruble crisis of 2014/15 Russia announced in the wake of U.S. and European sanctions over reunifying with Crimea that it would begin building a domestic electronic financial transfer system, an alternative to SWIFT. That system, System for Transfer of Financial Messages (SPFS), is not only now functioning in Russia, according to a report from RT it now handles the financial transfer data for more than half of Russia’s institutions.

US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has warned global financial messaging service SWIFT on Friday that it could be penalized if it doesn`t cut off financial services to entities and individuals doing business with Iran.

With global markets extending on torrid gains for the second day in a row on what has been just one catalyst: Trump`s apparent easing in tone over the trade war with China, which started with a Thursday morning tweet (just as the market had turned red after a disappointing mfg ISM report) saying trade discussions with China "are moving along nicely", followed by a Bloomberg News report that Trump has asked key cabinet secretaries to have their staff draw up a draft deal that he hopes will signal an end to the trade conflict, skepticism abounds.

Moments after stocks stumbled briefly in the red after the latest disappointing, and rather stagflationary Manufacturing ISM print, the S&P spiked higher following a Trump tweet in which the president said he just had a "very good" conversation with Chinese` president Xi, in which the emphasis was on trade and added that "discussions are moving along nicely."

Against the backdrop of rising trade protectionism in the world, it`s important that China and Japan enhance economic cooperation, including third-party market cooperation to promote regional development and free trade, experts here said.

In a stark reversal from its position just days earlier, the Trump administration is expected to allow Iran to remain connected to the SWIFT banking system the Washington Examiner reports, in what amounts to a major concession to European allies who have been pressuring senior U.S. officials to keep this key lifeline to the Islamic Republic open.

How is the US dollar like Humpty Dumpty? It’s all in the nursery rhyme: it’s fragile, it’s going to fall and crack, and no amount of energy (“king’s horses”) or military power (“king’s men”) will be able to make it whole again. There is an additional dimension to this falling-off-the-wall business. Wall-sitting is not so common, but the term “fence-sitting” is often used to indicate indecision.

We are now in that phase of the bubble cycle where pivoting to a sapphire results in unprecedented market cap gains. Shares of Yulong Eco-Materials, a tiny producer of fly-ash bricks based in Pingdingshan, China, surged as much as 950% on Wednesday - forcing the Nasdaq to halt trading four times within the first 30 minutes of trading - after the company revealed that it had completed the purchase of the Millennium Sapphire, a 17.9 kilogram gemstone that Business Insider described as "an icon in the world of art and gems."

Last week a report from the US based media outlet Bloomberg stated that the Chinese military had implanted a small chip in the circuit of servers belonging to major American tech firms with operations in China. Among the 30 companies reportedly being spied on by Beijing, the US tech giants Apple and Amazon were among the most notable. According to Bloomberg the small chip was able to digitally spy on and steal the trade secrets and private data belonging to American corporation. There was just one problem with the story – both the accused and the alleged victims have stated that it is totally false.

After a certain length of time examining history in-depth, anyone who is honest and relatively objective comes to understand that most of what we are told about our past in the mainstream is completely fabricated. We learn that much of “history” is not about posterity or heritage and more about a continuous set of false narratives peppered with half-truths. That is to say, what we thought we knew is actually lies.

Russian-made airliners are made with western avionics and engines because they are ready-made, and to give customers what they are already used to, not because Russia can’t develop its own.
It is only a matter of time until Russia, which produces enormously sophisticated avionics and engines for its military aviation, develops simpler counterparts for the civilian sector as well.

As key representatives of the three chief villains of international finance, the IMF, World Bank (WB) and World Trade Organization (WTO) met on the lush resort island of Bali, Indonesia, they warned the world of dire consequences in terms of reduced international investments and decline of economic growth as a result of the ever-widening trade wars initiated and instigated by the Trump Administration.

It’s enlightening to pay close attention to what Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the Council on Foreign Relations – as diplomatically as possible: “China will follow a path of development different from historical powers.” And China will not seek hegemony. From the point of view of the US National Security Strategy, that’s irrelevant; China has been framed as a fierce competitor and even a threat. President Xi Jinping will not cave in to Washington’s trade demands. So expect a possible non-meeting between Xi and Trump in Buenos Aires.

What’s clearly happening is that a faction of Israel’s permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies – or “deep state” – wants to join China’s One Belt One Road (OBOR) global vision of New Silk Road connectivity while the other wants to retain Tel Aviv’s stalwart pro-American foreign policy by preventing this, hence the public friction over this issue.